//------------------------------//
// Awakening (Stupid April Fool's Chapter) 
// Story: Last 
// by Alan Smithee 
//------------------------------//

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home..."
"Wake up, Simon. It's mommy, darling" said a familiar voice.
Simon opened his heavy eyes. He was in a rustic old room that he recognized instantly. He was in Kansas, in his old family house. The year was 1936. The headache-inducing colours were gone. Everything was in sepia. It brought a tear to Simon's eye.
His mother and father stood over him, grinning with relief.
"You had malaria and Spanish flu at the same time, but you're all better now"
Simon stuttered in disbelief. He'd dreamed he'd lived thirty years of his life in the far, far distant future. He'd gone places and seen incredible things. It had felt so real.
Their next door neighbour, Miss Oliver, appeared at the bedroom window at that moment.
"Well, he seems all right now!"
"Yes" said his father, "we thought for a while he was going to leave us"
"but I did leave you, father. That's just the trouble. And I tried to get back for days and days!"
"There there, lie quiet now. You just had a bad dream"
His mother left his side. His three sisters came in.
"Remember me, Tara?"
"Ashleigh?"
"You couldn't forget my voice, could you?"  asked Andrea.
"No. But it wasn't a dream. It was a place. And you and you and you...and you were there"
The four women chuckled.
"But you couldn't have been, could you?"
"We dream lots of silly things when we..."
"No, mother. This was a real, truly live place. And I remember some of it wasn't very nice. But the rest of it was beautiful. But just the same all I ever said to anyp.... anybody was "I wanna go home", and they sent me home!"
The people around him laughed nervously.
"Doesn't anybody believe me?"
"Of course we believe you, Simon"
"But anyway, Al, we're home!" Simon picked up the little Terrier, "And this is my home, and you're all here. And I'm not going to leave here ever ever again. Because I love you all. Oh mother. There's no place like home!"




NOT edited by KeatsLocksley. In fact, not subjected to any form of critical analysis whatsoever